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Americans are fascinated by their own love of shopping. This does not make them unique. It's just that they have more to buy than most other people on the planet. And it's also an affirmation of faith in their country, its prosperity and limitless bounty. They have shops the way that lesser countries have statues. |
Friday, August 22, 1997
Yesterday I watched World Wide Live, a satellite presentation by Microsoft, on my second PC at work. I watched it via Netshow, which isn't a bad way to watch that kind of thing. A series of demos and presentations interspersed with a few taped pieces, it was all about IE4 and Dynamic HTML. It wasn't new material to me at all, since that is the team I am working on, but I knew the speakers would be good, and it's interesting to hear how this material is presented to the outside world.
I invited a few of my web friends whom I knew were going to attend to send me their feedback. I was shocked to learn that Lance wasn't able to attend! His boss didn't get off the stick and register him. Sheesh! Luckily videotapes are available, and might be even more useful. More than one person can watch them, and they throw in the CDs that they gave away at the show.
One of the reasons that Netshow is a good vehicle to watch one of these all-day affairs is because if what they are talking about during a particular speech doesn't appeal to me, I can go ahead and do other things, just listening to the talk in the background. It's certainly better than going to an overflow room and watching on a screen.
I don't mean to have this be a big ad for MS, but it's where I work.
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After work I drove to Costco to buy snacks for Trollsylvanian Heritage Day. Did you know that Trollsylvanian culture is stick-based? So bread sticks, cheese sticks, and meat sticks are all on the menu. This prevents any problems with the health department about washing hands and sanitation and all, too.
I was able to prevent myself from going into my usual Costco trance, and limited my non-troll purchases to a huge clip-art CD-ROM collection, the paperback of William Gibson's Idoru, and cinnamon rolls which I brought to work today.
I stopped at my sister's house on the way home. Even after hunting around, we weren't able to find my nephew's vest for his Trollsylvanian costume, so I sewed up another one when I got home. Luckily there are only three pattern pieces, and I had plenty of cloth and enough bias tape already made.
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I wanted to go to a reading tonight by Jack Womack, which was down at Elliot Bay Book Company. This was held as a benefit for Clarion West. I even read his latest book, Let's Put the Future Behind Us, ahead of time. I do recommend the book, very dark and funny. Unfortunately the Mariners (the local baseball team) were playing the Yankees at the same time as the reading, which meant that I couldn't find a place to park. I was so irked after driving around (by this time not at all near the stadium or the bookstore) that I went home instead, stopping off to pick up a delicious chopped salad. (But I shouldn't have let the guy put the croutons on the salad. I don't think I had them last time and they overpowered the fresh basil, which is what I really wanted to taste.)
I've been notified that I'm added to the Often web journal ring. Yay! That's another incentive to write more.
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